Crazy Dog Lady

If I hadn't specifically checked, I'd assume it was the full moon, because the dogs can't settle down this morning. Or they couldn't, until I finally moved the computer back to the office and opened a file to write. It's as though they know I've made commitments to myself and they are frantic for me to follow through. Dogs.

I read Mary Oliver's Dog Songs last night. She writes like she's an old friend, and I loved the book. I suppose people who love dogs and have known them as best friends would also feel that way. One thing she talked about that made me a little sad was how dogs on leashes walking the sidewalk are not real dogs. That dogs need to run free. I confess that my dogs don't get that privilege. I'd like for them to, but they just don't have any common sense. I take them to the beach and they would run forever after the gulls and pelicans and my voice calling them back would be lost in the wind. They'd run so far I'd never catch up to them. I take them to the dog park, but they hover next to the little dog weight limit (twenty pounds) ... he is a little over, she is a little under, so they are not safe from admonition in either section. The big dogs would have them of course, but the little girl simply cowers in fear, and begs me to hold her. The big boy looks tine amidst the Great Danes and German Shepherds and Boxers. He tries to play, but the big dogs don't take him seriously.

It makes me long for the fields back in Iowa, where we used to take the dog of the moment and let him run. But that dog was Barney, the black lab, and he would not run so far that he couldn't hear me, and would always come back. Or the dog-friendly beaches of Michigan, but that was Millie, the golden retriever, and she'd jump into the cool water and swim until the humans had to go home. You could throw a ball from Michigan to Chicago, and Millie would bring it back to you. And it makes me remember sadly my Scout, the Border collie who never needed a leash, so long as you had a ball or a stick. She was not letting those "sheep" out of her sight.

But my dogs now, sweet little stuffed animals that they are, half golden retriever, with their common sense, and retrieving and swimming, and half poodle, also swimmers and retrievers, with a good dose of clever thrown in, exhibit very few of the traits of their parental breeds. I toss a ball for them and they look at me like I’m crazy. I take them to the beach, either the cool fresh water of Michigan or the sensuous salt of the gulf, and they love to look at the dead fish, and chase the birds, but they are very much not interested in going in. The little one hides behind my feet, the big one pulls away.
But they love to run around their fenced yard, love to walk on their leashes with me wherever I want to go (except please not that new park, they get cockle burs there!) And they don't shed, love brushing and they love my husband and me. They know our kids on sight and love them too, even though none of them live here. And strangers? They will do their tricks... one legacy from their poodle dad... and smile sweetly until anyone who meets them loves them back. I think that is their equivalent to off leash time, or maybe they are really not dogs, but stuffed animals come to life.

Anyway. Dog Songs, by Mary Oliver. Easy, quick little book of poems and sweet sketches.

Discovery

We threw a bag together,
leashed up the dogs
and headed south,
Because the clouds looked thinner there.

Needless to say, we got lost.
And it rained.
And while we listened to the Beach Boys
And the dogs slept,
we watched the green get greener
And technicolor wildflowers brush the ankles
Of contented cows, and happy horses.

Then we headed back home,
And the clouds turned into popcorn

Slippers

The cold lingers in Houston, waiting just one more day to remember it is really "springtime" here, and that flowers are blooming.  I was delighted to see the poppies jump out of the pansy beds, waving their cheery heads a foot above the other flowers. 

Today the temperatures go up though, and my self imposed exile to the house will end.  I will miss my dog slippers though...

Instead, they will pull me along the sidewalk as though they are magnificent white horses and I am a recalcitrant carriage. When my joints warm up, I try to walk with rhythm, silently counting out sets of eight like we used to do in aerobics classes, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 2,2,3,4,5,6,7,8; 1,2,3,4; 2,2,3,4; 1,2; 2,2; 1,2,3,4 and then start over. Funny how rhythms like that get stuck in my head. Or a song I've spent time sweating to...even twenty years ago, comes on the radio and suddenly my muscles want to step into a grapevine or Charleston or Step up and down and Cross... a history of life based on the exercise dances in the gym.  

Those classes were great places to meet and bond with other women.  The high intensity gave way to low intensity, then to things like Pilates and yoga.  Now I'm much more likely to spend an hour on an elliptical reading Kindle than I am dropping into a Zumba class, but there are times when I choose a machine close enough to the gym door to hear the music.   More often though, I am the Carriage of the Dogs.  But only if it is at least fifty degrees.

I'm editing chapter one of Invisible yet again, pursuant to some great advice I got from two of my adult children.  I knew it was missing something, and they were able to spot the deficiency.  Now if I can just struggle through today, I might be ready to send this one out.  There is a manuscript contest in Texas I'm thinking of entering.  

That reminds me of the contest I won when the Houston Writer's League hosted conferences.  It was a short story, and I edited it to death after it won.  I never sent it anywhere to be published because I wasn't confident that the edits improved it.  I am thinking of posting it here, but it would break my heart to post it online and have no one read it.  The insecurities, the insecurities!